tim

tim

for the past year I've been using a $HOME/templates folder to keep a number of templates for things like school reports, scripts, nix expressions, etc., but typing out the path each time is a little tedious, especially when I have to <tab> <tab> <tab> a ton to remember the filenames. I wrote this little go-script to set up an alias system for files, directories and git repositories (and because I wanted to look at golang a bit for the first time)

Sources and Templating

A source can be a file, directory, or git repository (heads up if your directory contains a git repository, as that is copied over as well; may address in the future)

tim uses the directory $HOME/.config/tim to store template configurations and copies so that they can be easily referenced and used elsewhere

As a quick summary, to add a source, say a file "Makefile" to your sources with the alias make, you can use

tim add file make Makefile

To then use that source for a template, you can use the tim plate command (see what I did there?)

tim plate make Makefile

^{If you so insist, you can use a more familiar tim clone command instead...}

I've tested this a bit using a report format I made for some lab classes this last semester:

tim add git report [email protected]:danninx/tu-report.sty.git
tim plate report .

Installation and Prerequisites

If you (most likely) plan on using git repositories as a source, you will need to have git installed and setup (with whatever authorization you need, normally an SSH key) on your system.

go install github.com/danninx/tim@latest

If you need to build from source, you will need go version 1.24+. After that, clone the repository and run go build and then copy the binary to your path, adding any permissions necessary.

Nix Configuration

If you use flakes for your system configuration, you can include tim as a flake input. Just add this to your flake.nix:

inputs.tim.url = "github:danninx/tim";

And make sure to include it in your modules section of your nixosConfigurations:

nixosConfigurations.joes-desktop = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
    modules = [ 
        ./configuration.nix 
        inputs.tim.nixosModules.default
    ];
};

Then you can enable it by either putting it in your environment.systemPackages, or use the following:

programs.tim.enable = true;

To-Do

• Fix this damn readme
• Check git sources upon adding for validity
• Template syncing
• Template editing
• Proper unit/end-to-end tests
• Jinja2/other engine CI for nix package definitions
• More configuration